Friday, 27 April 2012

Top Ten Reasons to Buy From Artisans

I have a newfound admiration for David Letterman's writers. I started this top ten list thinking it'd be easy. After all, there are millions of reasons why you should buy from artisans right? Well I'm sure there is, but most of my reasons I had in my head were just repeating what I had already written down. So if you have any other reasons why people should buy form artisans, let me know. I'd love to have other people do my work for me. :)

Without further ado, here's my list of why people should buy from artisans.

Artisans are living the dream. We all want to do what we want and make money doing it, and they've done it.

Each item they sell is unique. There's no machine making each product perfectly identical to the last one or to the next one. There's no factory assembly line.

Artisans create jobs, they don't ship them off to Third World countries.

And to that point, there's no child labourers getting paid less than minimum wage. If there are, it's the artisans' kids and that's called a learning experience.

The communities built around artisans are amazing. There's rarely any backstabbing or undermining one another. People are encouraging and supportive of one another.

Many artisans are the ultimate in recyclers. They take things that others may discard and turn them into beautiful pieces of art.

Artisans not only make their beautiful crafts, they're often generous enough to share how they did it.

Artisans are hard workers. Many work a regular job and then make and sell their crafts during their non-work time. In my opinion, hard work should be rewarded.

Many artisans are local, which means you can ask questions direct to the manufacturer.

Because they are the manufacturer, owner, sales person and clean up crew, artisans can actually think for themselves. Unlike many people who work retail who aren't allowed to think outside of what they're told, artisans can make custom changes, make suggestions on what works or doesn't and adjust pricing as they see fit.

Point 11 doesn't apply to everyone, but for me, because I sell under a certain amount every year, I don't charge tax on my product. That's like getting everything on sale!